Rules of Succession
by elenathehun
Summary: The Queen in dead. Long live the Queen. [Ta'a character study]


**Ta'a and Hapan culture are really one of the most underused characters and societies in the SW universe. A society of vicious nobility who call their ruler a goddess with no face, where succession goes to the strongest…**

**In the end, the Sith-like rules of succession in Hapes are what interest me the most, because the relationship between matriarch and heir must be very…complicated. **

**And when it comes right down to it, Teneniel was just an interlude, a _regent,_ if you think about it.**

_swswswswswswswswswsw_

It is a prison like any other: four plain permacrete walls, a metal bunk with thin padding, and a bucket in the corner. The door is the only sign of a hi-tech civilization – the locking mechanisms would bring the New Republic Chief of Cryptology to tears. Twice a day, food and water is pushed in through a grille; once a day, the bucket goes out.

And it is here Ni'Korish's daughter spends her days, alone save her own thoughts.

Her thoughts are not pleasant ones, consisting as they do of equal parts recrimination and ranting. She curses Isolder, for his strange, unnatural independence. She curses the barbarian, for her duplicity. She curses the Jedi for her weakness. But mostly, she curses herself, for not knowing. She curses herself for underestimating her son's will and Teneniel's resolve, and she curses herself for overestimating Jaina Solo's lust for revenge. And most of all, she curses herself for forgetting about Tenel Ka.

If there was one thing her mother had taught her, it was the value of keeping an eye – or two – on your own family. To have forgotten the lesson so _thoroughly_ – it shames her. She has forgotten, in the long years of peace, of the simple facts of betrayal and treachery. And her son's treachery burns, for she had thought that he, at least, understood that the Consortium needed a leader who cared for it, who would do what was necessary to keep it free.

For all that Teneniel was a barbarian, she knew what needed to be done. Tenel Ka, the _Jedi_, doesn't.

Hapes, Ta'a is sure, will fall within a year.

_swswswswswswswswswsw_

She is in prison seven months and three days, and then the guards take her from her cell. Even now, even after her fall, they treat her with respect. The handle her gently and ignore her face, but that just makes it worse. They think they are doing her a kindness. What they do not realize is that she does not _want_ it.

She wants their fear, not their pity. They pity her, and that means she is weak in their eyes – and weakness is not to be tolerated. She is sure she is going to her execution, and even as the guards tug her along, she searches desperately for a way out, a way to stay _alive_.

…_always remember, daughter, that while an enemy still breathes, there is still a chance of defeat. Killing your enemies is neither a mercy nor a cruelty, just simple necessity…_

Ta'a wonders if Tenel Ka has learned this lesson yet, or if she will practice that foolish quality she learned with the Jedi: mercy.

_swswswswswswswswswsw_

The guards take her down familiar halls, to familiar places: the great court of the Queen Mother on Hapes. And it is here that they release her and step away, their faces demurely turned down. Ni'Korish's daughter walks through the threshold and looks around her at the setting of her previous life. The rooms are beautiful and clear, and the light flashes off the waters of the many fountains in the rooms. And everywhere, there are people. She knows them all, knows who they are related to and their political beliefs and their loyalties and their weaknesses. But they do not look at her; their faces are turned away.

She walks through her home a stranger dressed in rags, her beauty gone with her power, and she wants to kill the girl for doing this to her. This is a message, a final humiliation before she is killed, and in the back of her mind, behind the hate and rage, there is slow, sarcastic applause. _Such_ a clever girl…

It ends as she knows it will, in the Throne Room. The courtiers still avoid looking at her face, but she knows that they still see her, still see what she has become. Never again will she be seen as divine, only as another woman. Only human…

And then she sees figure on the throne. The girl does not dress as _she_ herself did – there are no alluring silks and coy veils, no barely restrained sexuality. No, she wears a modified military uniform, every inch of skin covered by tight-fitting black leather and blue silk, hands gloved black and boots shined to a gleam. But…where her face is supposed to be, there is only a mask, surrounded by a halo of wild red hair.

Ta'a recognizes it as one of Edia Chume's Force Masks from the thirty-fourth century, the silver and white mask protecting the mind of its' wearer from influence. And as soon as her mind has caught up with the strange disconnect of being unable to see her granddaughter's face, she notices something else: She has two arms.

And when she realizes just what is going on, just what has happened, the hate/fear/disgusts morphs to hate/fear/pride/love. This lovely, inhumane figure, this vicious, venomous creature that Ta'a loathes with all her heart, is _hers_. More _hers_ than the Jedi or Teneniel or the New Republic, and that makes all the difference to her.

As long as the ruler is of Hapes, all is well.

And even though Ta'a is dead in all but deed, even though the little viper _destroyed_ her, she _is_ her, just as Ta'a is her mother and her mother was her aunt and her aunt was her cousin, all the way back to the first _Chume_ some four thousand years ago. And in the end, the humiliation, the fall from heaven, is the natural way of things – the heir must destroy the ruler before ascending to the now-empty throne.

Ta'a smiles bitterly, and bows deeply. "My life is yours, _Chume_."

Tenel Ka Chume nods in agreement, a goddess dispensing judgment from on high.


End file.
